Baily Winery

We started our visit at Baily Winery. Having arrived around Noon we decide to have lunch at Carol's Restaurant on the Baily property. I had a Salmon Salad and Nina has a Steak. The Salmon was prepared well and served over a bed of greens with grapes, gorgonzola cheese and candied pecans. It was a tasty combination of flavors but the salmon itself didn't have much of a punch. A little seasoning or perhaps a wine marinade may have helped this. The steak was ok but you would think at a winery based restaurant all steaks would be marinated in red wine to bring out the flavor. When you cut into a steak that hasn't been properly marinated it's blah. You shouldn't have to add salt to a steak that has been properly prepared.

This being said overall the lunch was tasty. I enjoyed a glass of the Baily Rose' with my salad and it was delicious. The Rose' was very fresh tasting and reminded me of a sparkling wine, somewhat effervescent. The service was also very good.

After lunch we entered the tasting room. The wine at Baily's is pretty tasty with their standouts being the Rose' and a Muscat Blanc. The tasting fee is $5 for 5 tastes from a list of about 10 wines not including their Cabernet Franc and Meritage. If you want to taste these you pay $10 but you still only get to try 5 wines. Since we were focusing on whites we decided to go for the $5 option and were not able to try all the wines they had to offer.

I have to say this whole # of tastings for # of dollars is crap. I understand why people charge for tasting but don't make the bookkeeping difficult. Just charge one price for basic tasting and another for "premium", 'reserve", or "extended" tasting. Don't make me have to figure out what wines I get to taste from a list. How the hell do I know what I want to taste if I haven't tasted it?

At the tasting room we met Phil Baily who seemed to be a nice guy. He asked us if we enjoyed our lunch. It's this kind of consideration and customer service that makes you feel good to patronize a store. The fact that he remember seeing us and was courteous was great and it was the last we would see of customer service in this wonderful valley. I also noticed that he was very tollerant to the guy standing next to me who was bragging about how he was the president of some pasta sauce maker and how because of Phil he now had a 2000 bottle wine cellar in his house. Yet you know that he probably drives a 81 Chevy Nova. His hoochie girlfriend looked like she used to work the local strip joint until the truck accident that somehow disfigured her horribly (insert your own image here).